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Utahraptor stands in the shallows of the great early Cretaceous inland sea, looking out to the horizon as the sun rises. Utahraptor, though one of the largest dromaeosaurs, was certainly not always taking down large prey in a dramatic and bloody fashion. On this morning, these dromaeosaurs were not hungry enough to hunt, so they combed the beach for shellfish and protein minutiae washed in by the tide. A small flock of ornithocheiroid pterosaurs pass by above.

Considered making this my 'All Yesterdays' entry (a Utahraptor not being a big badass and ripping apart everything in sight? Unheard of) but ultimately decided to do something more original for that.

what strikes me most about this is how the water is painted... every little detail, the foam of the receding waves and the next one coming, the shine on the wet sand... seeing familiar things like that next to such an unfamiliar organism... it reminds one of the overarching theme of evolution, the simultaneous unity and diversity of all life. The beach and the sky were the same for the dinosaurs as they are for us. That's a nice thought.

What a beautiful scenery. I like to see dinosaurs doing something different then hunting. And wow, more than 80 hours?! That's crazy! Although it's no wonder considering the level of detail. I especially admire the sea and the foam the waves are making at the beach. I imagine only that took a lot of time studying the references. I admire this piece so much!

You seem to be on a roll of crazy-beautiful digital drawings. 1st "Low-key Magpie", now this. I especially like this 1 for its scenic beauty. I can't help but wonder if the customer had that 1 scene from "Raptor Red" in mind. If so, then thank him/her for me b/c this is even better than what I imagined.

Thanks very much. The customer actually had no guidelines at all about the scene - they merely wanted Utahraptor depicted naturalistically, the rest was up to me. I drew no conscious inspiration from Raptor Red, but I wouldn't doubt that the scene manifested itself in my subconscious!

Beautiful as always, Emily! The waves are outstanding - no, the entire shoreline is. Astonishing work with the background, and the pterosaurs. The more I look at it, the more I like it.

Just one thing (I noted this in your "mantling" Deinonychus as well): I'm under the impression that the snouts of your dromaeosaurs look just too broad transversely. This might just be a matter of the artwork's perspective, so it would be interesting to hear something on this.

Can you say anything about what you think of this? (Incidentally, these predictions aren't from me or Emily.) I know you can't give any details, but I'm trying to test a hypothesis about people's ability to make predictions like these.

I would not use that set of predictions, Utahraptor is stranger than that. Which isn't to say that people cannot make these types of predictions, but how good they are depends greatly on how robust the known phylogeny of the group is, and frankly dromaeosaur phylogeny still has many questions that muddle it. But yeah, not correct I'm afraid